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Laminated steel body panels are used in different applications in vehicles, such as dash panels and wheel wells. A part made out of laminated steel has the potential to provide structure-borne noise reduction and also improve the airborne noise reduction of the part compared to a monolithic part. The use of laminated steel has been more critical when there are deep draws on the part as the deep draws cause localized resonances which degrade the acoustic performance significantly. However, due to lightweighting demands, hybrid laminated panels, commonly known as acoustic patch laminates have become very attractive. This paper discusses the damping and sound transmission loss performances of a dash panel part with monolithic, laminated, and acoustic patch panels.

Standards organizations develop standards depending on the need in the market place. With the change in vehicle design, lightweighting structures, and body panels made out of aluminum and composites, SAE’s Acoustical Materials Committee is developing a new damping standard. This standard is also very suitable in determining the damping performance of materials used in the off-highway applications, where the thickness of the steel body panel is much greater than in the automotive application. The general methodology of this standard is based on the mechanical impedance measurement method and has been developed with the general consensus of automotive engineers, suppliers, and independent test laboratories. This method is essentially based on the fact that a bar is excited at the center by a shaker. The force exerted by the shaker and the corresponding vibration is measured at that point to determine the frequency response function of the mechanical impedance signal.

Traditionally, the damping performance of a visco-elastic material is measured using the Oberst bar damping test, where a steel bar is excited using a non-contacting transducer. However, in an effort to reduce the weight of the vehicles, serious effort is put in to change the body panels from steel to aluminum and composite panels in many cases. These panels cannot be excited using a non-contacting transducer, although, in some cases, a very thin steel panel (shim) is glued to the vibrating bar to introduce ferrous properties to the bar so it can be excited. In the off highway vehicles, although the panels are made of steel, they are very thick and are difficult to excite using the Oberst bar test method. This paper discusses a measurement methodology based on mechanical impedance measurements and has the potential to be a viable/alternate test method to the Oberst bar testing. In the impedance method, the test bar is mounted to a shaker at the center (Center Point method).

The performance of damping materials is generally evaluated by experimental methods. However most damping materials used in the transportation industry cannot be excited by itself. Therefore, the measurements are generally made by exciting a damped system, where the damped system extends from a bar to a panel. The paper reviews various damped systems and excitation methodologies and discusses some of the limitations of a bar to study the damping performance for different applications. It discusses a methodology where a damped panel is mounted on a fixture and the fixture is excited with a shaker. The paper discusses data acquisition and data reduction procedures to obtain the damping performance of laminated steel acoustic patch products on a third octave band frequency basis.

This paper discusses the thought process that one needs to go through for developing an appropriate sound package treatment for a vehicle. In the development process one needs to put proper emphasis on understanding the source, path, and the receiver system. One needs to have an understanding on how to reduce the noise at the source, path, and/or receiver location. One may need to conduct a feasibility study of the benefits of various noise control options. In terms of sound package treatments one needs to understand the fundamentals of acoustical materials how they work and why one material performs differently than another one, as well as the importance of a well documented specification that every supplier has to meet.